Chapter 1: Crime and Policy: A Complex Problem

Question 1

What are the three major factors influencing crime problem?

Answer 1

1. Poverty
2. Race/Ethnicity
3. Geography

Question 2

What are two possible causes for falling crime rate?

Answer 2

1. Contextual factors

2. Policy influences

Question 3

What type of crime policy is best for research standards?

Answer 3

Evidence-based

Question 4

What factors indicate that crime drop is genuine?

Answer 4

1. NCVS is a reliable measure of criminal victimization.
2. Trends in NCVS have continued for 15 years.
3. The FBI’s UCR has reported same significant declines in last 15-20 years.

Question 5

What are some social indicators that affect crime?

Answer 5

1. Teenage pregnancy
2. Infant mortality
3. Unemployment rate/economy

Question 6

What is a contextual factor that contributes to crime drop?

Answer 6

A. Demographic Changes
B. Drug epidemics
C. Changes in labor markets

Question 7

What are some influential policies that influence crime?

Answer 7

A. Gun control policies
B. Increases in incarceration
C. Incapacitation of offenders
D. Innovation in policing

Question 8

Where did evidence-based research originate?

Answer 8

At the Cochrane Collaboration in England that examined health care policies

Question 9

Why do we need evidence-based crime policy?

Answer 9

A. Traditional lack of evidence to support policy
B. Some policies are harmful
C. New standards of evidence-based crime

Question 10

Name a program that was harmful to its participants rather than helpful?

Answer 10

Scared Straight

Question 11

What are the standards of evidence-based crime policy?

Answer 11

A. Empirical evidence
B. Experimental or quasi-experimental research design
C. Replication
D. Ability to be reviewed in meta-analyses

Question 12

What are the two most influential factors that determine whether or not you’ll be a crime victim?

Answer 12

Race and Income

Question 13

What are America’s two crime problems?

Answer 13

One that effects white, middle-class Americans & another that affects people of color, the poor and young people of color

Question 14

What are “bait and switch” policies?

Answer 14

Policies that are advertised as solutions to the most serious crimes but have their most serious impact on less serious crimes.

Question 15

What is an example of a “bait and switch” policy in the justice system?

Answer 15

The way in which policies are aimed at targeting violent offenders but most often result in the imprisonment of nonviolent offenders (i.e. sex offenders)

Question 16

Which ethnicity do Elliott Currie, Jerome Miller, the Sentencing Project and others feel that the war on drugs targets?

Answer 16

Young African-American men

Question 17

What does virtually every state strip a convicted felon the right to doing?

Answer 17

Vote

Question 18

What are the effects of sending many men from one community to prison?

Answer 18

A. Breaks up families
B. Weakens the critical social control function
C. Removes positive role models
D. Damanges the economic health
E. Undermines the legitimacy of our criminal justice system

Question 19

What is collective efficacy?

Answer 19

The capacity of ordinary people to work together to solve neighborhood problems.

Question 20

What does conservative crime control theology emphasize?

Answer 20

Personal responsibility (people are responsible for their own fate)

Question 21

What does liberal crime control theology emphasize?

Answer 21

Social context of crime (crime is the result of social influences such as the family, peer group, neighborhood, economics, etc.)